


Normality

by Yalu



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Community: love bingo, F/M, Fluff, Love Story, believe it or not
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-06
Updated: 2013-07-06
Packaged: 2017-12-17 21:05:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/871948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yalu/pseuds/Yalu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Their story wasn't one for the papers.</i>
</p><p> </p><p>The not so grand, not so epic, not even all that romantic tale of the courtship of Petunia and Vernon Dursley.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Normality

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [love_bingo](http://love-bingo.livejournal.com) Round Three. Prompt: Love story.
> 
> This fic isn't consistent with the extra information JKR gave us about them through Pottermore, mostly because I forgot to check first, but it turns out I was pretty close.

Their story wasn't one for the papers. There was no magic, no wondrous new world to explore, no dangerous bigotry threatening to keep them apart, and only a little drama.

Vernon Dursley was a simple man; he'd been brought up proper, worked hard and had his eye on someday owning Grunnings Drills. He had a little home on the edge of Surrey, read the paper every morning and ate mostly tinned beans because he'd never learned how to cook. He admired sports but never played them ("Don't you worry - those boys will never get anywhere in life anyway," Mummy had said after he came home from his very first game in tears) and gave out helpful advice and opinions every time someone else was wrong. He was largely content, with a promising future ahead of him and, all in all, boring.

Petunia Evans liked boring. _Longed_ for boring. Petunia's life was defined by everything that wasn't normal or boring and she had been looking for an escape since she was thirteen. Good grades, perfect composure and careful tending of her looks had barely brought her through school, with only a handful of dates and no real accomplishments. Petunia worked in the local coffee shop waiting tables and never got any special attention or tips. She saved diligently, spent carefully, and nearly every evening stayed shut up in her room trying to avoid her parents and the endless talk about her sister.

She never talked about her sister.

They met one Sunday afternoon at the shops; Vernon was making his weekly trip to stock the pantry (his basket was full of tinned beans) and Petunia had nipped out to pick up a few things her mother had forgotten that morning. She walked past him twice in aisles two and five without paying any particular attention (young men in suits weren't often in the shops, but she had been ignored too many times to expect to turn heads now) and he saw her pass without caring beyond thinking how nice her ankles looked under her pretty floral dress.

They met properly in aisle seven after Vernon loudly told off a shelver for mislabelling products and deliberately deceiving hard-working folks like him into believing they could buy only the tea leaves without all the extra frippery and gadgets that they then had the audacity not to sell in their establishment. Why, then, did they even sell loose leaves? And why, he demanded, were tea leaves sold for the same price as tea bags? They should be much cheaper.

Petunia had been watching quietly from beside the shelf of tea strainers. She wondered if this fuss was because the most popular brand of teabags had been out of stock last week, and if perhaps the blond man hadn't realised they were back, just moved two shelves down to accommodate the new herbal sorts her mother kept saying Lily suggested taking for- No, he had probably seen it, and she didn't want to embarrass him by asking. She _did_ want to talk to him. For years she had waited, hoping that young men would notice her and step closer and talk to her, but they never had and Petunia was becoming quietly terrified that they never would. She was pretty, she knew that much, and there was nothing wrong with _her_ , but still, nothing ever happened and, in desperation, Petunia was starting to wonder if she might have to speak to a man first.

So she did. It wasn't the most courageous thing she would ever do in her life, but it was one of them. She picked up a box of her own favourite brand of tea bags, politely approached the young man and asked if he had ever tried them - they were almost the same, she told him, but these were five pence cheaper and less prone to tearing when stirring them with a spoon. Vernon had been surprised, but pleasantly, and there was nothing he appreciated more than a good five-pence saving. He bought two boxes of the new brand and loudly praised her shrewd choices while the shelver made his getaway.

He offered to carry her basket to the till, walked her home, and asked her to dinner that evening.

They fell in love over food. Vernon took her to the same restaurant every week, a little place classy enough to impress that he could still just afford, and over every meal Petunia talked about how her own recipe differed (was better) if she knew it, or how she would try making it if she didn't. Vernon never said a word about how to cook but had very strong opinions on what constituted good taste. They liked each other for exactly the things they'd been hoping to find - stability and good common sense, mostly, and Petunia's prayers for normalcy had been answered to the point of caricature. There were no surprises on their path: both had been looking, vaguely, for someone to someday marry, and went into their very first conversation with that thought in the backs of their minds. They had wondered, then hoped, then slowly come to expect and plan their future as their weekly dinners went on over months. There was no passion, no drama, and nothing to spoil their nice, cosy future.

Except Petunia's sister. She had fretted over the subject of Lily for months, avoiding all mentions of her to Vernon except that she went to school "far away", but on the evening he first suggested they should meet each others' families, Petunia had stiffened and barely held herself together long enough to escape the restaurant before bursting into tears. He had been startled, but put his arm around her and glared down any passers-by who so much as looked at them funny, and when she confessed to her terrible secret he froze only a few moments before saying, "Then we simply shan't associate with them."

Vernon would never recognise this as the most selfless, loving thing he would ever do in his life. He never thought of it as an act of love; the word never even occurred to him. Partly it was because he didn't quite understand what it was he was saying - he just couldn't imagine a world where lovely young ladies could have witches for sisters (he did not, after all, approve of imagination). To Vernon, things were quite simple: Petunia was more important than some crazy people he would never meet, and in an odd burst of tenderness, he said as much.

She threw her arms around him and cried into his shoulder in relief. It was a tad awkward. He patted her shoulder.

Two weeks later they were engaged, and everything from proposal to honeymoon and settling into their first home went smoothly, except for one weekend when Petunia's freak sister and her horrible boyfriend visited the Evans'. They never talked about it again, and Vernon never realised how much it meant to Petunia that he stuck by her even after that. The last of her anxiety disappeared, and from then on, in their own restrained way, they were both very happy. There was no reason not to be.

So no, their story never made the papers. They wouldn't want it to.


End file.
